The Well-Red Mage recently held a giveaway contest, in which commenters were challenged to predict his #1 entries on 7 top 7 lists over 7 days. I didn’t win but I came close, so here’s a recap of my predictions.

On video game developers, I correctly predicted SquareSoft, who developed the Final Fantasy series, the Well-Red Mage‘s favourite franchise. Not to be confused with SquareEnix, which was the result of a merger that essentially created an entirely new company.

On superhero video games, I incorrectly predicted Batman: Arkham Knight, which was only the Well-Red Mage‘s 4th favourite superhero game. It is, however, his highest-rated superhero game, though his review did state that his favourite superhero video game overall is Batman: Arkham Asylum. If only I’d actually read it.

On video game towns, I predicted Truce from Chrono Trigger. I was incorrect but the #1 spot was indeed from Chrono Trigger: Zeal. I figured that his favourite video game town must surely be located in his favourite video game but there were so many locations that I went for the protagonist’s home town. Oh well, it was my best incorrect guess.

On most controversial posts, I predicted Princess Mononoke (1997). This is something that I tried to measure with mathematics; having compared the average critic ratings with reviews scored a 9.0 or over, I calculated that the film Princess Mononoke (1997) had the widest contrast – 9.3 on the Well-Red Mage : 8 on Rotten Tomatoes – a difference of 1.3. Ultimately, the post that the Well-Red Mage considered to be his most controversial was The Last of Us (2013) (PlayStation 3): 9.0 on the Well-Red Mage : 95 on Metacritic, a difference of only 0.5. It depends how “controversial” is defined. I was tempted to say The Last of Us but didn’t actually think of it as being all that controversial given the insignificantly small difference between his personal rating and the average Metacritic score. He did, however, judge it to be the most controversial due to the frequency of disagreeable comments. That’s fair. I only blame myself for not saying The Last of Us because I thought I could solve the problem with mathematics. Never do that with a subjective medium.The 4th “most controversial” post, Asking Big Questions #002: “Are video games art?”, is one that I partially inspired due to my taking part in a private Mage thread. I don’t blame myself for the controversy because I didn’t choose to publish the article. I did, however, publish my own response to the question I’d somewhat prompted.

Finally, on honourable mentions, I predicted Final Fantasy VII. The question was inspired by the Well-Red Mage‘s Twitter thread in which he ranked his top “100” favourite games, and was focused on those not included. Final Fantasy VII is a game which the Well-Red Mage frequently praises, and I was surprised that it wasn’t included in that 100. In fact, it was his highest-scored game to not be. So that was my guess. The actual #1 honourable mention was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was pretty much a shot in the dark, and on this occasion, I wasn’t going against my own instinct. I’m still surprised that Final Fantasy VII wasn’t in his Top 100.

Published by Alexander Sigsworth

Writing about Herobrine in The Characters That Define Us at Normal Happenings. Profile photo chosen for Gamers Blog Party: Summer 2019 at Later Levels. Known as the Purple Prose Mage at the Well-Red Mage.
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